Random thoughts from a few cantankerous American physicians. All contributors are board certified. Various specialties are represented here. I do not know where this will lead but hope it will at least be an enjoyable read. All of the names mentioned in this blog are pseudonyms, the ages have been changed, and in half the cases the gender as well. All photographs are published with patient consent or are digitally altered to preserve anonymity. Trust us, we're doctors.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Okay, first of all, the names of the gay bars here are funny. I mean "Woody's"?? And "Bump" for a lesbian bar is just classic. How about "Stinky Dick's"? (I have copyrighted "Stinky Dick's" so don't steal it). How about "Lipstick Canyon"? But only a Democrat could get away with pinching Chelsea Clinton's ass. A republican, especially a white male, would now be wearing cement shoes and be resting on the bottom of the harbor. Fucking ridiculous double standard douchebags.

Also, since it would please me greatly to have a bunch of "Complimentary and Alternative Medicine" LIARS have to pay to advertise here I'm going to say "Complimentary and Alternative Medicine" or "C.A.M." for short, a few times here. The "healing touch" people are also similarly deluded and may not be as smart as the C.A.M. people in that the nurses I've met who actually practice "healing touch" do seem to sincerely believe in manipulating energy fields and such. Personally I find that a native headdress with do-do bird feathers in it, a rattle, a bone through my nose, and dramatic drums playing in the background sets the mood in which I get the best outcomes from treatment in the ER. Seems to scare the shit out of a bunch of patients though.

Next time someone tries to tell you about "C.A.M." or "healing touch" smile and nod and then say "prove it". They can't, all they can do is tell you why they can't, and the discussion then tends towards the 'bias' of the scientific method and white males etc... DELUDED LIARS AND CHARLATANS. A pox upon you all.

27 comments:

I agree. My sister has a Phd in Integrated Medicine/Clinical Psychology, and she's still dying of cancer. When my son fell off the cliff she sent him biofeedback CDs, and we were just trying to get him to walk. I've lost faith too--it was the docs that fixed him, not the biofeedback. And I agree with RadGirl's comments yesterday: Too often the moron alternative types end up blaming sick people for their illness, because they have screwed up energy fields/negative thoughts/too much stress/not enough vitamins/gluten in their diets etc... I've heard so much of this in relation to autism, too: It's desperation, magical thinking and a retreat from reality. Oh, and Happy Earth Day.

A few years ago my dad asked me what he could do to cut his risk of prostate cancer. I said he should invent a time machine, go back to 1952, and masturbate regularly, since early self abuse was the only thing that appeared to work. People hate it when you give them a scientific answer.

thanks for pointing out that it is earth day! i'm going to celebrate today by converting gallons of a distillate of 100% hydrocarbon into carbon dioxide and water in my huge pick up truck.

without getting into a sermon the CAM and 'healing touch' shit, to me, is only popular because we, as a nation, have discarded reason for 'magical thinking' as you say. as soon as we got out of the cave there's a bunch of people who want to run right back in.

with reality and science comes responsibility and the eastern point of view regarding these things is attractive to many because it's very easy. one's ability to feel and empathize are therefore worth something and now people can make money from appearing to be caring.

as an aside i had a good friend that i practiced with out west. he is a complete hippie, smokes pot,is a self-declared 'free thinker', and wears birkenstocks. still, he's an ER doc.

he was amazed that he took care of a 21 year old man a few years ago whom he diagnosed with a chest mass and cervical lymphadenopathy. further workup confirmed that the patient had hodgkin's disease. as a rule, we can cure this in young folks. this young man went native though and went to a CAM practitioner for 'all natural' therapy.

my friend saw him a year later after the CAM had failed and the young man was now desperate and willing to embrace the 'western' cure. too late. he died.

my friend was amazed, and i was amazed that my friend was amazed. there is such a thing as reality. there is such a thing as 'right' and 'wrong'. there are such things as 'good choices' and 'bad choices', and this young man made a stupid choice and paid the full price for his ignorance and magical thinking.

i don't know but i'm sure the 'practitioner' who treated him is still in business, how would one sue him? probably the patient didn't try hard enough, huh? maybe he didn't eat enough peyote or do the smoke ablution therapy correctly.

calling it 'complimentary and alternative medicine' is a sneaky trick too, as the CAM practitioners can piggyback on the real stuff and take some credit.

to the extent that they provide a caring presence while the real doctor, who may be an ass, provides the cure, i'm sure that CAM has many fans. at best, i see even my sickest patients in the ER for a few minutes in a few hours. i've got too many patients to do the sit down and hand-hold for any longer.

i would respect the CAM and healing touch folks a bit, at least, if they would completely disavow western medicine when they get sick, but they don't. they know what works, especially when it comes to them or their families.

snake oil still sells. maybe i should work on marketing DRX's bat guano, bee pollen, and goat's milk slurry.

Heres my Earth Day story, its wrong on so many levels. The local minor league baseball team plays an annual 11am midweek game where local elementary students are admitted free. One year it happened to occur on Earth Day. In between innings one of the teachers played "Earth Day Trivia" with questions that were all just Al Gore propaganda. Ironically, despite global warming it was quite chilly, and she was bundled up like an Ice Road Trucker. Of coursemy own children were at their private school, gaining precious SAT points. Lastly, despite a great game, the poor kids were made to leave in the 8th inning, as the educators work day was nearing its end.

My brother in law is soon to graduate as a "something" in alternative and chinese medicine. He tried accupuncture on me once when I was on vacation and totally messed up with some sort of sinus infection. I just wanted something to help me sleep because I wasn't going to run off to the giant charity hospital in Vegas to get treatement in the ER.

He made me worse. I tell ya, those needles made my head and neck throb in a whole new dimension. Turns out, when I went to urgent care the next day, I had bad pneumonia, on top of my sinus infecton. Those needles didn't do a damn thing for me.

You are a nice sister-in-law to allow him to experiment on you. Ask him for me, if you will, if he could recommend any treatment or therapy for shrinking my penis. It's far too large in both length and girth for most American women and they do tend to complain a lot about it. They do come back though!

Ice Road Truckers! My 4 year old loves that show. I think if I were a less attentive mom I could put him in front of the tv and he would happily sit there and watch it all day long all the while hoping one of the trucks would fall through the ice so he could see what it would be like. Luckily he is only 4 and doesn't realize how awful that would be in real life so I don't need to worry about him being some kind of sociopath just yet.

HEY!!! I'm a public school teacher, ya know. The best teachers go into public schools, as the money is much better. I do admit, though, that private schools do provide a lot of amenities that public schools can't afford. My son went private for awhile, and the only benefit was that he was a classmate of a incredible orthopedic surgeon, who operated on my spine twice this year (successfully). Back to school night is a great place to meet doctors.

no award radgirl, but i hereby proclaim you a practitioner of "complimentary and alternative medicine", or, if you choose, i hereby certify in you in "healing touch" and "electrical field realignment therapy". you will probably make more money at it than i do in the ER... i mean people actually pay CASH for that shit.

Off topic comments? Umm my nephews birthday is 4-19. It would have been 4-20, except my sister saw where that was Hitlers birthday and called her OB to reschedule(My brother in law was more upset that it was also Florida Coach Steve Spurriers birthday)not such a big deal except all this foolishness happened on April 17th. Anyway, now the brat shares a birthday with British Actor Tim Curry, better known as Dr. Frank N Furter from the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I'll be sure to ask him drx. I must say in his favor that when he slipped on some ice and broke his arm in 2 places, that his teacher was very excited to "get some needles into him" as he staggered into class right after it happened. I believe he said something to the effect of get that shit away from me, I want some real medicine.

My husband grew up in Japan. Although they make the stellar medical technology that we use, the themselves do not know how to use it. I could tell you stories that would make you cry. My mother in law slipped and fell and had a blow out orbit fracture to her orbit. Her Japanese doctor said that they'd wait a month and see what happened even though her eye ball was clearly sunken at least 1/2 inch into her socket. I did some internet research, presented it to my inlaws, asked an anasthesia friend to recommend a surgeon, and she flew out the next week to my house to get it reparied. Apparently in Japan they like to let the body fix itself first. The Japanese doctors said that if they fixed it, they would remove a piece of bone from her hip and go in through her cheek to fix the socket. Her US eye surgeon said that was about 20 years behind what is done now.

If you have a heart attack in Japan, you're dead. Ambulances wait in traffic, and cars don't pull over. Hospitals won't accept ambulances anyway. They call and call and call trying to get in somewhere and the patient almost always dies.

My husband broke his finger in a basketball game. The Japanese doc reviewed the x-rays and told him, "it's not broken today, but come back tomorrow as it may be broken then." Way to pad your bill Yoshi!

Off the subject, In line at the bookstore the other day I saw The Complete Idiot's Guide to Global Warming. I will refrain from making a joke because my mind nearly exploded at the many levels of irony, sarcasm, and downright wit you could approach this with.

500 as the Over/Under for Al Gore/Oprahs combined weight in pounds? I'll go out on a limb and take the Under. As the average human exhales 3.5cc/kg/min of CO2 fatties put quite the strain on the eco-system if you believe in all that crap.

" a native headdress with do-do bird feathers in it, a rattle, a bone through my nose, and dramatic drums playing in the background is the environment in which I get the best outcomes from treatment in the ER."

911doc: I was thinking about your "how to sue a CAM quack" question, and I think you'd have to take one of three approaches: Practicing medicine without a license, fraud or assault/battery (but you have the consent problem) And there's also good old negligence, the bane of your profession. but there's a reasonableness standard, i.e. how would a reasonable CAM practitioner behave, and well, you see the problem...

Frank: No time travel needed. If he's a man, he took care of business.

911,Its a good thing you don't live in the Congo. Ya just might be finding yourself under a spell from one of those witchcraft practitioners.http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080422/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_congo_democratic_witchcraft

thank you for the news tip and link. all of us here at MDOD have been looking for a top notch penis shrinker for some time. you see, we are, well, making our lovely ladies a bit uncomfortable. evidently it CAN be too big.

I don't know 911 and DRX. You could probably paste up a picture of Hillary Clinton on the ceiling above your bed. Her mug could peel the pain off of a house, it'd probably cause some shrinkage for ya'll too. I dunno, a picture of Janet Reno might be even more effective, but you weren't looking to induce impotence were you.

agree about hillary. janet reno is the kind of ugly, though, that she might be very kinky and 'experimental' as she would be so grateful for the attention. that is, of course, assuming she likes men. cleveland steamer?

please let me retract the portion of my rant that pertains to you in any way shape or form.

all snarkiness aside here's my take. CAM, chiropractic, healing touch, magnet therapy, armoatherapy, and whatever, i don't care. if it makes the pateint happy or puts them at ease or puts them in a frame of mind that decreases their anxiety level then in all likelihood they will do better than the alternative. great.

it is my belief, however, that this is the sum total effect of CAM. also, it frosts my pumpkin that i can be sued for millions for 'malpractice', and Lord knows in my business the decisions i make CAN kill people or harm them permanently, but they can also save their lives or cure them.

i am unaware of any way to sue a CAM practitioner. so CAM folks can have their cake and eat it too... they can therapize and 'treat' but then are untouchable because there is no standard of care and no evidence that one can put in front of a jury.

also, unless i'm mistaken, they get paid for what they do. i am mandated by the govt. to give my services gratis but there i go again on a rant.

You guys and penis size...actually, in my fortunately anonymous experience the hugely endowed guys don't want a partner, just a fan club. It's not enough to take off your clothes and wait for applause. Average guys are more fun!